In 1776, on the fourth day of July, the Representatives
of the several States in Congress assembled, declaring our
independence, asserted that a decent respect for the opinion
of mankind required that they should declare the reasons for
their action. In this new crisis, we have a like duty.

In 1776 we waged war in behalf of the great principle
that government should derive its just powers from the
consent of the governed-in other words, representation chosen
in free elections. In the century and a half that followed,
this cause of human freedom swept across the world.

But now, in our generation-in the past few years-a new
resistance, in the form of several new practices of tyranny,
has been making such headway that the fundamentals of 1776
are being struck down abroad, and definitely they are
threatened here.

It is, indeed, a fallacy, based on no logic at all, for
any Americans to suggest that the rule of force can defeat
human freedom in all the other parts of the world and permit
it to survive in the United States alone. But it has been
that childlike fantasy itself-that misdirected faith-which
has led nation after nation to go about their peaceful tasks,
relying on the thought, and even the promise, that they and
their lives and their government would be allowed to live
when the juggernaut of force came their way.

It is simple-I could almost say simpleminded-for us
Americans to wave the flag, to reassert our belief in the
cause of freedom, and to let it go at that.

Yet, all of us who lie awake at night-all of us who study
and study again-know full well that in these days we cannot
save freedom with pitchforks and muskets alone, after a
dictator combination has gained control of the rest of the
world.

We know that we cannot save freedom in our own midst, in
our own land if all around us-our neighbor nations-have lost
their freedom.

That is why we are engaged in a serious, in a mighty, in
a unified action in the cause of the defense of the
hemisphere and the freedom of the seas. We need not the
loyalty and unity alone; we need speed and efficiency and
toil and an end to backbiting, an end to the sabotage that
runs far deeper than the blowing up of munitions plants.

I tell the American people solemnly that the United
States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of
liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.

And so it is that when we repeat the great pledge to our
country and to our flag, it must be our deep conviction that
we pledge as well our work, our will, and, if it be
necessary, our very lives.